


The Crossing

by bittenfeld



Category: I Spy, I Spy (1965)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Emotional, Gen, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 05:41:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1293436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittenfeld/pseuds/bittenfeld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A muggy night in Hong Kong, but Kelly’s thoughts are preoccupied by the memory of a cold dark night in Berlin, a cold dark nightmare…  He knew Scott would try to say something, to offer words of wisdom, to make it all right.  Only, nothing would make it all right ever again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Crossing

The stink. That was the one thing that the glossy Hong Kong travel brochures never quite got around to describing. The stink of a million bodies all crammed into thirty-two square miles.

Across the waterway scattered the lanterns of a thousand sampans, all gently bobbing in the filthy polluted bay, a skeleton forest of bare masts and thatches. And beyond that, the twinkling lights on the dark mass of the mainland. It was hard to tell where the land ended and the star-speckled midnight sky began.

And over it all, the pervading stench of humankind.

Robinson didn’t bother to close the window, as he stood there, five stories above the street, taking in the rush and flow of late-night city life. Even the elegant ambience of the Crown Royal Hotel – for which he and Scott paid an outrageous forty-eight dollars a night out of their daily expense account – could not mask the dirt and filth down below.

A flick of fingers sent the cigarette stub sailing down sixty feet. For a moment it glowed like the gleam of a diving firefly, before winking out in the blackness.

Barely shifting his eyes from the scene outside, Robinson palmed his near-empty pack of Luckys from the couch-side table, and for the sixth time that evening, tapped out a cigarette, placed it between his teeth and lit it.

Behind him, the quiet slap-slap of cards on the bedspread marked the progress of Scott’s two-hour solitaire game.

Down below, car horns honked furiously over some minor interference. With negligent disinterest, Robinson glanced down into the jungle of red lights and amber lights, and blue and green – a cacophony of light and sound and conflict and frustration.

And the stench. The interminable stench.

And how appropriate. He stunk now, and the job stunk, and the Department stunk most of all. After the grotesque fiasco of last Thursday, neither he nor the job nor the Department would even smell clean again.

Sucking a drag of harsh smoke into his lungs, he sighed it out, then pulled the vapor back into his mouth and played his tongue around it. And remembered another scene half-a-world away, but just as foul, just as polluted, just as corrupt.

Scott had not accompanied him on the run. The Department had needed a single agent, a face unknown to the German border guards, an operative who never had, and never would, work around Berlin. So they had pulled Robinson away for just a day to make the drive to Checkpoint Charlie. Pulled him all the way from his and Scott’s assignment in Hong Kong, just to sit in a truck and make a delivery, no questions asked. And so he had sat there, in the Citroen 150 rumbling down the two-lane highway to the Wall, and listened to the desperate pleas of the man beside him… the helpless pleas to release the bonds and allow the truck door to accidentally fall open for just a fraction of a minute… the futile begging finally degenerating into sobs of dismay. He had listened to it all, silently, immovably.

And made the delivery on schedule.

Another deep drag on the cigarette.

And still Scott’s cards went slap-slap-slap, just like they had for the last two hours, just like they had for the last two nights, in an unending game that Scott could play without any mind to the lay-out. Just something to occupy his hands, and leave his attention free.

Another pull on the smoke, a perfunctory glance to the floor over his shoulder, and Robinson insisted bluntly, “Stop staring at me – you’re making the back of my neck crawl.”

With a sigh of surrender, Scott forfeited the game and tossed the cards aside.

Robinson heard the covers of Scott’s bed rustle, as his partner climbed in; then the bedside lamp – the only light in the room – clicked off. The darkness hid both of them. Hid the stains.

“You coming to bed any time soon?” Scott inquired. “Or are you planning to stay up again all night, staring out the window?”

“What difference does it make to you?” Robinson snapped brusquely, lips tight. Then hearing his own scathing tone, he relented, and answered more calmly, “I’ll turn in in a few minutes… just as soon as I finish this smoke.”

He knew Scott was still watching him, watching him for an opening to say something, to comfort, to offer words of wisdom, to make it all right.

Only, nothing would make it all right ever again.

Scott tried anyway. “Kel,” he finally attempted, “torturing yourself isn’t going to make it go away.”

Robinson snorted, a dry sardonic sound, and rejoined, “Torture – that’s the operative word here, isn’t it? You want to guess what they’re doing to him right now?”

“I don’t want to think about what they’re doing to him right now.”

Robinson squinted up at the night sky. “Y’know,” he admitted, “I don’t even know his name. I know he escaped from Poland in 1949, leaving behind a grandmother and two brothers, and defected to the U.S. I know he’s got a home in Minot, North Dakota, a wife of twenty-three years, and three kids – a girl in college, and a boy and girl in junior high school. But I never even knew the poor bastard’s name.”

“Maybe it’s better that way,” Scott suggested gently.

Robinson continued his narration without responding. “He insisted he wasn’t KGB, he never had anything to do with the KGB. He said he came to America and joined the Department to fight against communism, to help make the world a safer place, where no one would ever again have to fear a midnight knock on the door.” Another breath of smoke, voice softened, tone flat. “That’s the damn irony of all this.”

Scott just shook his head quietly.

The cigarette burned low in Robinson’s fingers, so he tossed it out into space. “He said he was working late one night last week, when Internal Affairs walked into his office unannounced. They told him they had information naming him as a KGB plant. They never listened to his protests, never heard his accusations of a frame-up. They said he was going to be handed over to the KGB, and the Department would even pick up the transportation costs.”

“Mistakes happen, Kelly,” Scott tried to soothe. “Sometimes irreparable mistakes.”

“Yeah,” Robinson agreed. “And what if tomorrow that mistake is me – or you? What if one of us gets handed over the KGB tomorrow, just because some area director receives dirty information, or some computer hiccups?”

“And what if he was just feeding you a line?” Scott countered. “What if he really was a plant? How do you know? How could you know? Torturing yourself every night isn’t going to answer that question, Kel.”

Clouds blotted out the quarter moon. A storm was moving in from the South China Sea. The breeze picked up, signalling the change in fronts. Robinson’s clammy shirt clung damply to his back. It would be one of those muggy showers, the kind that raised a sweat even in the middle of the night.

Berlin had been cold and dry.

The bitter taste of smoke lingered in his mouth. He ignored the urge to reach for another cigarette.

“They never even let him say goodbye to his wife. She has no idea where he is, or what’s happened to him – except whatever story the Department made up. He begged me, if I wasn’t going to let him escape, to at least go to her, tell her the truth…” Tongue flicked out to lick thinned lips as an unconscious anxious reaction, and he admitted in a low monotone, “I couldn’t say anything. An hour-and-a-half of having to listen to his life-story, I just kept wanting to tell the guy to shut up… But I couldn’t say that either.”

“Kelly, you did your job. You followed your orders.”

“Yeah, I followed my orders. I’m a loyal trained operative.”

Then finally abandoning his night-watch, Robinson moved over to his bed in the dark, undressing on the way. Shirt followed belt, trousers followed shoes. The blankets fell to the foot of the bed, and Robinson climbed in under the single light sheet, propped his head on one fist, and stared up into the nothingness.

And he couldn’t tell Scott how he did know, couldn’t tell him what the end was like – the grotesque scene that played itself over again behind his eyes: watching the hunched figure walk past the barricade into No-man’s land; and the four black-trenchcoated men approaching from the other side, shoulder to shoulder, like an echelon of vultures.

How halfway across the bridge, for just a moment, the man had turned and looked back at him. And in that moment, Robinson had almost answered the man’s last silent plea, almost broke the rules to enter No-man’s land himself and try to take him back, a heroic rescue attempt with a glorious fire-fight, against overwhelming odds. He had considered it.

And didn’t even try. Some rigid sense of duty restrained him, like a ramrod up his spine.

Because he was a loyal trained operative.

And then the moment was gone, and the man resignedly passed beyond the Eastern checkpoint; and the vultures took control of the situation, crushing the man in their heavy blackness, and hustling him off to the other side. And there was nothing more for Kelly to do.

And he had watched them go, watched them load the man into the back of the staff car and drive off. He had watched, and felt the heaviness in his gut, then turned and walked away, back to the Citroen. Assignment completed.

Now he lay in bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, enclosed in the blackness of night, the blackness of thought. And he pondered.

“What do you suppose a ticket costs to Minot, North Dakota?”

From his bed across the room, Scott just shifted position, and grunted softly, “You can’t afford it, Kelly.”

And the humidity finally gave way to showers, the air stifling close, and Robinson said nothing more.

* * * * * FINIS * * * * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> The setting was based on a scene of the episode "A Cup of Kindness", of Scott playing cards while Kelly is staring out the window.
> 
> The plot was based on an actual event.


End file.
